Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part a preliminary injunction issued by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court with respect to newly promulgated regulations regarding unconventional well drilling. Marcellus Shale Coal. v. Dep't of Envtl. Prot. of Commonwealth, 115 MAP 2016, 2018 WL 2452607 (June 1, 2018). In the decision, the Court rejected the argument that courts should defer to a regulatory agency when deciding a preliminary injunction with respect to the agency’s authority to issue regulations, and also shed light on how it interprets allegations of vagueness and conflict in agency regulations. The majority opinion was authored by Chief Justice Saylor and was joined in full by all the associate justices except for Justice Donohue, who authored a concurring and dissenting opinion. Justice Donohue’s opinion, perhaps most notably, voices her disagreement with the Commonwealth Court’s interpretation of Article 1, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, known as the Environmental Rights Amendment. Read More »

In August 2016, pursuant to § 7601 of the Clean Air Act, EPA issued its proposed Amendments to Regional Consistency Regulations (“Amended Regulations”), 40 C.F.R. §§ 56.3-56.5 (2017). The Amended Regulations state that, for purposes of implementing the Clean Air Act nationwide, EPA would only apply decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit uniformly:

Only decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court that arise from challenges to ‘nationally applicable regulations . . . or final action,’ as discussed in Clean Air Act section 307(b) (42 U.S.C. 7607(b)), shall apply uniformly.

In National Environmental Development Association’s Clean Air Project v. EPA, No. 16-1344 (D.C. Cir. June 8, 2016), industry groups (“Petitioners”) challenged the Amended Regulations in the D.C. Circuit on the basis that EPA is charged with implementing the Clean Air Act uniformly nationwide and must establish mechanisms for resolving judicially-created inconsistencies, as opposed to ignoring them. In the decision rendered earlier this month, the D.C. Circuit denied the petitions for review and upheld the Amended Regulations. Read More »

On June 1, 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, held that a municipality was required to amend its zoning ordinance before it could allow natural gas operations in a residential-agricultural zoning district. Gorsline v. Bd. of Sup. of Fairfield Twp., et al., No. 67 MAP 2016, 2018 WL 2448803 (June 1, 2018). Specifically, the Court ruled that the Fairfield Township Board of Supervisors improperly found that the drilling and operation of a natural gas well in a Residential-Agricultural (“R-A”) district was “similar to” other uses in the R-A district. Although the Township’s zoning ordinance did not specifically allow drilling, the zoning ordinance provided that when a use is not specifically permitted by the zoning ordinance, the Supervisors may permit the use if, among other things, it is “similar to and compatible with the other uses permitted in the zone where the subject property is located.” The Supervisors found that Inflection Energy, LLC’s proposed gas drilling was “similar to” other uses in the R-A district. The Commonwealth Court upheld the Supervisors’ decision, finding that the gas drilling was similar to and compatible with a “public service facility,” which is a conditional use in the R-A district, and which is defined as the “erection, construction, alteration, operation or maintenance of buildings, power plants or substations, water treatment plants or pumping stations; sewage disposal or pumping plants and other similar public service structures by a utility, whether publicly or privately owned, or by a municipal or other governmental agency, including the furnishing of electrical, gas, communication, water supply and sewage disposal services.” Read More »